Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Art student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is—and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

Days of Blood and Starlight is the second book in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. Like the first, I loved it. Taylor has such a way of building this beautiful, yet horrible world. Normal yet fantastical. Familiar yet entirely new. And the second one didn’t disappoint

Days of Blood and Starlight Review

I love the mixing of the normal and the fantastic. I talked about this in my review of DoSaB, but it rings true in this novel as well. Which is interesting to me because this novel is much, much more “fantastical.” I can’t think of a better word than fantastical, so I’m going to keep using it. Taylor uses Karou’s friends from Prague, Mik and Zuzana, to bring this sense of normal and real. And I love them. Zuzana might honestly be my favorite character. Anyways, these two are present so that we (since we’re humans and not mystical beasts or angels) can relate to the story in a deeper way. Also, the involvement of Zuzana just shows how truly important friendship is to this story. Zuzana was friends with Karou long before any of this craziness started happening. And they’re friends despite that. And I like that. I like that despite the madness and war and betrayal and torment, friendship is remembered and the small, secondary characters aren’t just forgotten. This was my only quip with the first, that I didn’t see Zuzana more, so I’m so glad she had a more important role in the sequel.

Along with Zuzana, Taylor also uses small characters to personalize the war. It’s literally a war of terror between the chimaera and the seraphim. Children and farmers are being slaughtered. And Taylor gives these small, brief moments from their perspective and it’s beautiful. Hauntingly beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. I think this really helped me connect with the story. It also shows that there isn’t really good or evil. There’s good people on both sides, innocent people on both sides. But there’s also malicious and evil people on both sides. These moments of changing-perspective really give the reader that glimpse into the innocence of both chimaera and seraphim. If it was just a story about a war, I don’t know how much I would have liked it, connected with it. But I read from the perspectives of these small characters being affected by the war. And that affected me.

I think I mentioned this in my review of DoSaB too, but, oh well. Taylor’s pacing is perfection. Literally she knows just how long each chapter should be. Right when to switch perspectives. The very moment she should end a chapter or part of the book. She knows all how to do all of these things to make the reader want to keep reading…which is a good thing because these books are getting longer and longer.

I don’t even have anything bad to say about it. I just really, really liked it. And I’m already reading the third so prepare yourself for that review!

Noted Quotes

“One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass.”

“Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wise she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn’t pack for every eventuality.” Lol Zuzana.

“What had Brimstone wanted her to know? It was time to ask. She would never again hear his voice, but there were his words at least, his message. ‘Is it good or bad?’ she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn’t help herself.
‘It’s both, sweet girl,’ said Issa. ‘Like everything.'” THEME ALERT, THEME ALERT

“Karou turned to Zuzana and found her looking every bit as unflabbergasted as Mik. ‘That’s it?’ she said. ‘I tell you I’m not human, and you’re all tra-la-la?’
‘Sorry,’ said Mik. ‘I think you neutralized our capacity for surprise. You should have started with that, and then told us you raise the dead.'” Lol Mik.

“You only have to begin, Lir. Mercy breeds mercy as slaughter breeds slaughter. We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.”